Love and Decay by Rachel Higginson Page B

talk
through my feelings and I got the impression that Adela didn’t
exactly have the best advice for me.
    “He’ll apologize,” she finally said.
    “What?”
    “Miller. Maybe Santi too. They’ll apologize
for acting like children. They’ll ask for your forgiveness and tell
you they’ll never behave that way again.”
    I looked at her again. Her dark hair had been
braided beneath a red bandana that set off her caramel skin and
kept her dark, heavy waves out of her face. Her equally dark eyes
stared at the horizon with a spirit of confusion I’d only glimpsed
from her before. She seemed… lost.
    I waited for her to continue, but when she
didn’t, I had to ask, “Then what?”
    She blinked once. Twice. A tear fell from the
corner of her eye but she swiped it away with the back of her hand.
“He’ll promise to stop being a drug lord and become a warlord
instead.”
    I was too stunned to speak. My mind spun with
all of the facts I knew about Adela and Diego, trying to piece them
together to make sense of this new information. But I couldn’t. I
didn’t have enough of their backstory.
    I didn’t know enough about Adela’s past or
Diego’s sordid history to solve this puzzle.
    “You love him?” It was an inane question and
totally crude. But I couldn’t help but ask. I mean… this was
shocking. Adela never opened up like this.
    She finally turned to face me. “Do you love
Miller?”
    “No,” I answered quickly. “Not like that. At
least not yet.”
    She jerked her chin to where Miller was being
restrained across from Santi, who was also being held back. “And if
he acted like that every day… if he couldn’t turn that off… if it
was part of who he was… who he would always be… would you let
yourself fall in love with him?”
    Yes , I thought immediately. No ,
quickly followed. I chewed my bottom lip and wiped my sweaty palms
on my leathers.
    Maybe.
    Adela misread my silence and said, “You
wouldn’t. You couldn’t love a man like that. You’re too good, Page
Parker. You’re too much light. The darkness in a man like that
would eat you alive.”
    Even as she gave her warning, I wondered if
that was true.
    I also wondered if it was too late for
me.
    Had I already fallen for Miller?
    Had he already started to eat me alive?
    “Are you going to stay with us, Adela?” The
question fell out of my mouth without thought. I didn’t even
realize I’d been worried about her leaving us until this
moment.
    She stared at her feet. “I haven’t decided
yet.”
    “Can I talk to you?”
    I blinked up at Miller. He stood over me, his
shadow getting lost in the shade of the half wall I leaned
against.
    “Please?”
    I felt Adela’s I-told-you-so glare, but I
ignored her. Miller had never been a drug lord. I wasn’t positive
about the whole warlord thing yet, but I was almost positive I
could talk him out of that.
    Mostly positive.
    He held out his hand and after a slight
hesitation, I took it. He pulled me to my feet and I absorbed the
sight of his bloody, swollen lip and the dark bruise blooming over
his right cheek.
    “What do you want, Miller?”
    He glanced down at Adela. “Can we go
somewhere private?”
    “Are you going to try to punch
something?”
    His brows furrowed in frustration.
“Page.”
    “Miller.”
    Deciding not to deal with my crankiness, he
grabbed my hand and tugged me along. We stayed silent as we passed
all the people that belonged to us and some that didn’t. Hendrix
raised an eyebrow at me as he subtly stepped in between Santi and
Miller as we walked by. I shook my head once to let him know that I
was okay.
    I could tell it took a lot for Hendrix not to
intervene. He had always been so good at protecting me from danger,
and right now Miller seemed like a pretty big threat. But this was
a battle I had to figure out on my own.
    Unlike before in the church, however, this
was not an amusing way to torture my older brother.
    Miller took me back inside the old church
where I’d